Not ready for his closeup: MSNBC would be wrong to hire Al Sharpton for a nightly hosting gig

By JOHN MCWHORTER

Jul 24, 2011 | 4:00 AM

It might not be a great idea to give Rev. Al Sharpton the floor -- on national television. (Sabo/News)

One might assume that the Rev. Al Sharpton's likely appointment as a nightly talk show host on MSNBC is evidence that America is increasingly post-racial. It is actually evidence to the contrary. MSNBC, having suffered criticism for not having enough minorities in prominent slots, has opted for what used to be called tokenism.

Not that Sharpton doesn't have a considerable footprint — although its nature is misunderstood by many, who continue to labor under an impression that he is what might be called influential. Sharpton himself was even given, back in the day, to supposing he was on his way to becoming the leader of black America. Of late, however, Sharpton has been settling into a role I always thought he would be best suited for: that of a celebrity.

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He is, after all, quite entertaining. To share a room with him is to immediately understand why he stays in the media spotlight. Roll the tape again and he would likely be a comedian. His hosting a radio show has seemed just the thing.

Quite another thing, however, is the notion of Sharpton as a peer to Keith Olbermann or Lawrence O'Donnell. There are issues of gravitas that typically inform choices such as these. If Olbermann lost his welcome because of his political contributions, then we cannot help but notice that Sharpton comes with a certain amount of baggage.

Let's recall: Sharpton is the man who, in 1987, supported Tawana Brawley in a laughably implausible rape charge, and to this day refuses to recant, probably for fear of alienating his constituency. This means that he has refused to take back a vile lie that poisoned New York City's racial climate for years.

Then, in 1995, a Jewish store owner was accused on flimsy pretenses of driving a black store owner out of business from a vendor's market in a building on 125th Street. Sharpton speechified against the "white interloper." In the heated atmosphere, a young black man stormed the building, armed, and gutted Freddy's Fashion Mart. Death toll: eight. Sharpton: unrepentant.

When a white woman was raped and beaten in Central Park in 1989, Sharpton insisted against all evidence that her boyfriend was the culprit. And Sharpton all but ring-led the Crown Heights race war with such memorable counsel as "If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house."

It must be added that Sharpton has mended his ways since those days. He has played a key role in heightening awareness of police brutality against blacks, which few realize is America's main obstacle to truly getting past race. Sharpton also deserves praise, which I've given him, for partnering with former New York City Chancellor Joel Klein to urge profound reform to inner-city public schools through the Education Equality Project.

Yet the weight of his past exploits remains considerable, especially when, as an apparent gesture to old-style Black Power unity, he has neglected to apologize for these episodes in anything but the vaguest of terms. Need a cable talk show host have led a morally pristine life? Certainly not; Fox News personalities are not all choir boys, and America quickly got past the initial oddity of Eliot Spitzer's co-hosting a (short-lived) show on CNN.

However, it is hard not to perceive that Sharpton has a great deal more moral transgression in his past than Spitzer's seedy extended peccadillo. Besides, Spitzer lent to the job his penetrating analytical skills and longstanding engagement with the issues of the day.

This is something Sharpton, despite his intelligence, does not bring to the table. We classify Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity neither as geniuses nor as impartial, of course, but both are hungry generalists in a way that Sharpton is not and has never claimed to be. They, in other words, are talk show hosts; Sharpton is a race crusader.

Here, the more recent past is instructive, such as Sharpton's debate performances during his run for the presidency in 2004. Asked his views on free trade, Sharpton responded that "African-Americans are here on a bad trade policy ... just because it's trade doesn't mean that it is good and it is something that we should support." Some found this clever, but it also revealed Sharpton as uninterested in the substance of issues beyond ones centered on race. Rep. Charlie Rangel has noted that, in general, Sharpton has displayed no interest in legislation making its way through Congress.

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Another memorable episode in the 2004 campaign was when Sharpton accused Howard Dean of racism in not having black people in his administration as governor of Vermont — a state with a 1% black population, and much of that constituted by children.

What was key in that exchange was Dean's pretending to respect this charge out of deference to Sharpton's channeling the larger trope of black grievance. The implication was that black people, as a group grappling with disadvantage, are exempt from clear thinking — a position inherently disrespectful despite its cloak of pity. It was tacitly forbidden to engage Sharpton as an equal, a politesse founded ultimately on dismissal. A better word here, in many ways, would be denigration.

Sharpton hosting a serious talk show on a major television network is more of the same. "The Reverend" certainly has name recognition and entertainment value. But the ample negatives remain, and it's difficult to imagine that a white figure harboring them would be sought out by MSNBC as an evening host. The implication, unintended but no less unfortunate, is that Sharpton's hiring is acceptable because he is black. That is, to expect a black man to own up to serious mistakes or engage with detail is to miss the point when he is famous and charismatic.

There was a time when it was acceptable to think of black people as most welcome in the role of entertainers. In his protest work, Sharpton has played a role in getting America ever further from those days of entrenched racism. It is ironic, to say the least, that MSNBC is now putting him in the shop window to lend the place a little color

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McWhorter, who teaches at Columbia University and is a contributing editor at The New Republic, is author of "Losing the Race" and "What Language Is, What It Isn't and What It Could Be," to be published in August.